2. In a Red Sox-Reds game in Cincinnati, the home plate umpire was the infamous C.J. Buckner, who, not to put too fine a point on it, stinks. He had six calls reversed on challenges by the Reds, and was thoroughly embarrassed. The Red Sox had used up their challenges because of a bad challenge by Sox stud Roman Anthony, who is known for his batting eye, early in the game. Not being able to challenge the calls by Buckner pretty clearly lost the game for Boston, which was decided by one run in extra innings. Worse, Buckner, as a petty “So there!” to the players, called a check swing by a Sox player a strike three and refused to allow the base umpires at first and third confirm his (wrong) call as is the usual practice in check-swings, apparently out of petulance.

3. It was assumed that the ABS system would end managers arguing with umpires over ball and strike calls, but the Minnesota Twins manager Derek Shelton was ejected from a game for arguing that the Orioles pitcher had challenged a ball four call a second too late.

4. Ex-MLB umpire Rich Garcia made a fool of himself by complaining to a reporter about ABS. “I think it’s embarrassing, embarrassing to the umpires that are calling the game, “he said. “Nobody likes to be humiliated in front of 30,000, 40,000 people. What Major League Baseball is saying is: I don’t trust the umpire’s strike zone, so I’m going to use something that’s going to be operated by some computer geek that knows nothing about baseball, and he’s the one that’s going to measure this and measure that because he’s got a Ph.D. in physics or whatever the hell he’s got a degree in.”

Richie Garcia was a really bad umpire. A strike he missed on a 2-2 pitch from San Diego’s Mark Langston to the Yankees’ Tino Martinez in the 1998 World Series let Martinez hit a tiebreaking grand slam on the next pitch that started New York on a four-game sweep. He’s infamous, and he still argues that baseball should protect umpires from embarrassment and allow games, careers and championships to be affected by their mistaken calls rather than use available technology to protect that game against incompetents like him.

4. In an article that should be enshrined in the “Letting the Perfect Be the Enemy of the Good” Hall of Fame, a writer for The Athletic argued that the ABS system’s one-sixth of an inch margin of error undermined the integrity of the system. A retired lawyers freind sagely said that ABS is like the Supreme Court: it’s decisions aren’t final because they are necessarily right, they are right because they are final.

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